


welcome to my funeral (i know that you're--)

by placeless



Category: Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: 2005 pete, Bipolar Disorder, Can I call it that?, Cutting, Depression, M/M, Medium AU, Mental Health Issues, mikey is dead, ok honestly everyone is, pete can see the dead, pete is like, pete is lowkey suicidal but he doesn't say it out loud, real fucked up in this one, what do i even tag this as, why the fuck did I write this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 23:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6170476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/placeless/pseuds/placeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>mikey is dead and pete can see the dead</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a sad man

the air outside is humid but the school’s bathroom has air-conditioning. pete’s hands are shaking, trying to keep the pair of scissors steady. he hasn’t cut in two weeks, but a jock called him a fag today, and he’s sensitive and a stereotype so _of course_ he had to go cut.

a laugh bubbles from his lips as he drags the scissor blade across his wrist. they’re classroom scissors, fit for a five year old, not a eighteen year old manic depressive. they’re coloured this play-doh red colour, a bit brighter than the blood running down his skin. he wonders if he should return them, so that one day he can watch as greta the hypochondriac picks them up, wipes them off, only to realise that there’s blood on her hand wipe.

he hears the bell ring in the hallway and the sound of feet pounding on the floor. he leans back against the toilet seat, wondering what everyone would think if he went out there like this — blood dripping from his wrists, looking like a poster child for depression. people would probably stare, their mouths hanging open, and then someone would call the mental asylum, telling them to lock him up again. he’d spent three weeks in a mental rehabilitation centre the previous summer. white rooms mixed with white pills mixed with the blinding smiles of nurses in his head. they hadn’t wanted him there, he hadn’t wanted to be there, and he definitely didn’t want to go back.

when he leaves, he puts the scissors in the sink for someone to find. if they realise that it’s him, so be it. nobody will be surprised.

he grabs his bag from his locker and leaves, knowing that skipping school isn’t on the criteria for getting into columbia. he’ll deal with the consequences tomorrow, like he always does.

/

he can’t go home because his mom is there, doing god-knows-what, so he aimlessly walks the streets. as he wanders, he thinks that chicago can be a pretty place if you look at it in a certain light.

there’s a park a little ways from wal-mart that has a cemetery next to it. there’s a bunch of benches in it, all dedicated to people buried next door. he sits on one that has two names — _michael james way_ and _gerard arthur way._ he wonders who they were, what their meaning was, why they ended up on a park bench instead of nowhere.

a lanky guy sits next to him after a couple minutes, hands shoved in his pockets. his dark hair hangs into his face, a shocking contrast to his sheet white skin. pete stares at him for a few seconds, wondering why he sat next to him when there are a dozen other benches around the park, all empty.

the guy doesn’t say anything, so neither does pete. he looks at his hands instead, subconsciously pulling down his sleeves. his wrists burn, but so does everything else, so he doesn’t do anything about it. he gets up after a couple more minutes, casting one last glance at the lanky guy — he’s staring blankly at the ground, eyes dead. pete wonders what kind of drugs he’s on, and where he can buy them.

he goes to a café and sits in the back, listening as patrick the waiter goes on about some new eighties band he’s discovered. pete likes patrick — he studies music at the university, and speaks in it, too. pete’s pretty sure that if patrick were to cut his wrists like he does, there would be no blood; there would just be beethoven’s ninth.

patrick doesn’t ask why he’s not in school at noon on a tuesday and pete appreciates that, so he listens to his rant and sips his coke. there’s no one else in the café, just them, and patrick’s enthusiastic words bounce off the walls. after awhile, more customers come in, and patrick has to leave. pete pulls at his sleeves and gets up, hearing a group of twenty-something year olds snicker about the _‘emo fag’._ his wrists burn harder than before as he leaves.

/

the sky is a mural of pinks and oranges later that night. pete watches from his bed, trying to copy what it looks like down in his notebook. he tries to string together words to fit its beauty, to fit what it means, but it doesn’t mean jack shit so he throws his notebook across the room.

his mom comes up, telling him that dinner is ready. it’s probably some shitty casserole and he’s not hungry, so he never goes down. instead, he climbs out his window and heads to the park again, the one with the benches. he doesn’t know what he’s looking for but when he gets there, the lanky guy is still sitting at the _way_ s' bench.

for a second pete thinks that he’s dead, that maybe he’d overdosed on pills earlier that day and come to sit next to pete, only to fucking die right next to him. but then his hand twitches like a spastic mouse, and pete breathes out in relief.

“dude, are you okay?” he asks, approaching him. “you’ve been here for hours.”

the guy’s head snaps up and he stares at pete for a couple of seconds, neck twisted in this real fucking weird way. he asks, “are you talking to me?”

“um, yeah. you’re the only person here.”

he blinks like he hadn’t thought of that. “oh. um, i’m fine.”

“are you sure? because you kind of look like you shot up too much heroin in the back alley and now you’re paying the price.”

the guy nods, this jerky movement done like he’s a robot. pete wonders if maybe he was in a coma and still isn’t used to having his body back.

“ _o_ -kay,” pete says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “i’ll just be going now…”

as he walks away, he hears the guy shout, “wait, stop!” he turns around, wondering if this guy is gonna offer him some drugs, because after this day he kind of feels like getting high. “how can you see me?”

“what?” pete pulls a face because _what the fuck?_

the guy’s head moves back and forth jerkily again before saying, “never mind.”

the park goes eerily quiet after that and pete itches at his scratches. maybe he needs more sleep.


	2. a bad man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think that i could've left this as a one-shot but it was supposed to have multiple chapters so here you go
> 
> it's like 2 am here and i can't really write but  
> enjoy

pete is taking a shower, carefully opening the cuts from earlier that week with a razor. it hurts, but sometimes he thinks that it’s the only way he can feel alive. everyone in this world is numb and so is he, and this is the only way to feel.

he washes the shampoo out of his hair and the blood off his wrists before stepping out of the shower. he used to sing in the shower, when he was younger, but ever since he’d heard patrick the waiter he’d known that he could never rival him.

he wraps bandages around his wrists before putting on his clothes. it’s a saturday, but he still woke up early. old habits die hard.

going downstairs, he grabs a granola bar but throws it out five minutes later. he goes to the park to watch the sunrise. it’s not a pretty one — the sun comes up in a haze of greys and blues, and pete almost laughs because people always spout bullshit about sunrises being insanely beautiful, but this one just looked like the badly done graffiti of some thirteen year old kid.

he’s sitting on a boulder and swings his legs a bit before jumping down. he wanders over to the part of the park covered in benches, and can see the lanky guy still sitting there. he’s been sitting there all week, and pete’s pretty sure that he’s a homeless junkie.

he sits on a different bench this time, dedicated to some guy named _william beckett_. all these people dead in his own city, and he’s never heard of any of them. all they have left in their memory are some shitty park benches. pete’s pretty sure he wants to be famous, so he doesn’t have to go like this; a dusty headstone and a plywood bench. he’ll go out in a flurry of fireworks and flowers and he’ll have damn mourners going through central park with candles, just like john lennon.

“yeah, i’ll be john lennon,” he murmurs to himself, scratching the back of his head before getting up. his stomach is grumbling and he knows that he should eat something, but he has a bad habit of destroying himself and hasn’t eaten in two days.

he wanders over to the lanky guy, trying to kick him in the shin. but his foot misses and he falls to the grass, staining his jeans. he hears a sort-of-chuckle and glances up, seeing that the lanky guy is actually showing some emotion.

“what’re you laughing at?” he asks, standing up and spitting some dirt from his mouth.

the lanky guy cracks a smile. “nothing,” he says. he talks like a robot. “you keep coming back here. why?”

he shrugs. “my city, my rules.”

“you don’t own chicago.” he laughs this time, genuine. “nobody does. this city’s as free as the birds above.”

“this city’s as free as all of us are,” pete says flatly, sitting down next to him.

he shrugs. “maybe. but that still doesn’t mean you own it.”

they fall into silence, before pete asks, “why have i never seen you before tuesday? i’ve seen everyone from every school, everyone from everywhere here. what makes you so special?”

“that’s hard to explain.”

pete cocks his head but doesn’t ask any further questions. maybe he’s a runaway from some third world country, or just a washed up student at the university that used to never leave his dorm.

“so, what’s your name?” he hates small talk, but it seems like the only option here.

“mikey. you?”

“pete.”

they look at each other for a couple more seconds, before pete gets up. “i’m… i’m gonna go.”

“yeah. okay.”

/

pete forgets about mikey for awhile. he still sees him sitting on the bench when he’s walking home from school, still notices how people sit next to him like he’s not there. pete feels like there’s some obvious explanation for it all that’s staring him in the face, but he’s such an idiot that he can’t see it.

someone threw the scissors from tuesday in the trash, and pete had been pretty sure that that was the end of that. but someone had thrown all the trash from the guy’s bathroom into the hallway like a fucking asshole, and greta the hypochondriac had been the one to find the scissors. now there was a school-wide hunt for who the crusty blood on them belonged to.

pete doesn’t have any friends because he doesn’t fit into any one clique. he could be in the band club, but he plays soccer, so they think he’s too cool for them. but the jocks think that he’s too lame for them because he likes music, and the english club is just filled with a bunch of pretentious idiots who wax poetic about shakespeare late at night while listening to the smiths, and while he could probably fit in with them he doesn’t really want to.

anyway, even though he doesn’t have friends, he hears rumours. everyone hears rumours. one day while he’s sitting underneath that big oak tree in the school front yard, he hears ashley the whore tell hayley the groupie that the scissors belong to frank iero. frank iero is this sophomore who’s shorter than pete, and pete knows that he goes hardcore like no motherfucker ever before. pete almost laughs as he listens to the two girls, because it’d be fucking hilarious if they did belong to him.

luke the second soccer star (behind pete) tells them all at practice that they belong to this one weird guy named brent, and pete laughs because _as if_. he hears again that they’re frank’s, and then that they’re brendon the band geek’s, ryan the hippie’s, even joe the janitor’s, but never once does he hear that they belong to him. it’s almost funny.

he goes for a jog one night, taking a shortcut through the park. mikey is still there, and pete slows down as he reaches him.

“why’re you always here?” he asks.

mikey looks up at him. “i have nowhere else to go.”

/

pete thinks about mikey in the shower once, maybe jacks off to the thought of his cheekbones twice. he wonders what his point is — if there even _is_ a point, or if he just doesn’t have a life so he spends his days wasting away on a park bench. the thought drives him crazy one day at school, so he skips and goes to the park, finding mikey there like always.

“are you part of a protest or something?” he asks, walking up to him. “like, _this bench won’t go and neither will i?_ or are you just homeless?”

mikey cocks his head jerkily. “you have no idea, do you?”

he frowns. he hates being in the dark. “yeah, i have no idea. so maybe you could give me one.”

mikey scratches his bottom lip. “i’m dead.”

“yeah, right,” pete laughs, taking off after that.

/

he comes back two days later at midnight, sitting next to mikey on the bench.

“i’ve been thinking about it and — seriously?”

mikey shrugs. “you can believe it if you want to. no one else can see me but you.”

“so you’re not dead, i’m just nuts.”

“sure.”

/

on the last day of may pete goes back. he sits in front of the bench and looks up at mikey.

“so, if you’re dead, why can’t i see anyone else?”

“you can, if you try.” he points at william beckett’s bench. “try looking closer. you’ll see bill. or look to the bench next to him. you’ll see gabe.”

he does, and the faint silhouettes of two more lanky teens enter his vision. he blinks. “okay. _okay._ so, are you guys all ghosts or something?”

“or something.” mikey shrugs. he always shrugs.

/

pete returns on the last day of school with a lukewarm coffee in his hands.

“how’d you guys die? and who’s gerard?”  

mikey’s lips quirk up. “i thought you’d never ask. i’m not sure how we died. nobody can remember. all i know is that gerard — my brother — committed suicide after i died. he’s written in this bench with me but… he’s not tied down to it like i am.”

pete blinks. “wait, so you’re _tied_ to this bench?”

“yeah.”

“like, you can’t leave until it’s gone?”

“yeah.”

“oh.”

/

pete’s graduation robes rub awkwardly against his cuts and he bites his lip through the whole ceremony. he gives this bullshit speech about how much it meant to be a student at north shore, and everyone applauds him afterwards. he’s not sure why.

he slips away from graduation dinner and goes to the park. he talks to mikey all night about his plans for the future, how he’s probably gonna go play for some hotshot team but doesn’t want to. how he wants to make a band with patrick the waiter but doesn’t know how to ask. mikey just listens, doesn’t say anything. it’s not uncomfortable, though. pete doesn’t think he could ever be uncomfortable around mikey.

he goes to the café patrick works at the next day and tells him that he can sing like no one else he’s ever heard. they pick up joe the janitor and make this shitty garage band with no name. pete talks to mikey after every practice, spouting all this shit about how good it feels playing with them. mikey doesn’t say anything. pete hasn’t heard him say anything for awhile.

/

their band is called _fall out boy_ and they’re on fucking _fire_. pete’s visits to mikey become less frequent as he becomes more involved with the band, more involved with other people.

sometimes, late at night on the tour bus, far away from chicago, he thinks of mikey. of his pearly teeth and sharp cheekbones and pale skin. he wonders if he was ever really dead. pete’s pretty sure that he was.

he goes back after two years. the band’s doing well, better than ever, and he feels his heart pulling him in the direction of the park.

when he gets there, there are no benches. just trees. he blinks, wondering if he’s at the right park. he is.

“hey, excuse me!” he yells at a grave keeper, jogging up to him. “do you know what happened to the benches in the park over there?”

the old man scratches his head. “city took ‘em away. not sure why. something about ‘em bein’ unimportant or somethin’.”

“oh.” pete blinks. “um, thanks.”

he goes back to the park and sits where the ways’ bench used to be. he wonders if mikey passed on, if he reunited with gerard. he wonders if there ever even was a mikey. he’d never even gotten that close to the brunet, and had left him for two years, but he still feels a little bit empty.

he gets up an hour later and leaves. maybe when he's older he could join mikey, but now isn't the time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this didn't really go in the direction i had in mind but i do like how it turned out so yeah thanks for reading


End file.
